April 9, 2004

I rented a Braun slide scanner that is able to scan up to 100 slides in one go. This could be the perfect solution for me - I have thousands of unscanned slides.
Unfortunately, although this is a very good idea, the scanner itself still leaves a lot to be desired. Colours are fairly neutral, but very often, it will not correctly detect the format of a picture and try to scan a “portrait” as a “landscape” or vice versa.. It’s also quite fond of simply cutting of parts of dark pictures. A nightmare for night photographers.
Having said that, I was able to scan quite a few pictures, so the future of these pages is not in doubt.

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March 15, 2004

When my slide scanner (Minolta Dimage II) started generating strange error messages and very often completely refused to cooperate, I was tempted to just replace it.
Then, I thought better of it and looked for a software update.
Couldn’t find anything on http://konicaminolta.com/
Even searching the site did not bring me to a download section.
So I wrote a short mail and was positively surprised when I received an answer 2 days later.
The mail by Minolta contained a link to driver update and my scanner has functioned very well ever since.
So, before dishing out that money for an expensive repair or a new scanner, you might want to try a software update first.

Laurenz

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February 22, 2004

I have waited for such a scanner for a long time: wouldn’t it be handy if you could feed your scanner whole trays of slides and let it scan while you do something else.
How much time could this save us? And what an elegant way of saving all ones pictures on a digital medium.
Now, Braun and Reflecta offer such a scanner that actually looks very much like a slide projector - not really surprising considering Braun’s expertise in this sector.
Tests were mixed however and there seems to be a difference between the Braun and Reflecta scanners - although they are the same model! This obviously has to do with the software (Braun comes with Silverfast) and the drivers.
One test in a German photo mag was quite encouraging: although the Braun was not in the absolute top (Minolta took the top spot for scan quality) its scans were classified as good.
If you consider the time you spend staring at your monitor when scanning, the small difference in quality may not be worth it.
Don’t know yet whether I’ll buy this one though. It may be wiser to wait for the next (improved) version - after all this is the very first scanner of its kind.

Laurenz

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February 7, 2004

Regardless of whether they have been taken directly with a digital camera or scanned from film:
Lots of images are saved onto CDs and DVDs every day.
But: how safe are they there.
Reading an article in a German Computer Magazine I realised that this may not be for eternity.
Prints and slides always have deteriorated over time - the same seems to be true for digital storage media.
Quite possible that we won’t be able to read them in a few years?

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January 28, 2004

Well, for very little money, you can now buy a 5 Megapixle camera, 8 Megapixles are state of the art for serious amateurs, so what kind of pixel-monster would you expect NASA to use on a critical mission?
Sorry, but according to an interesting article , the camera they use for the exploration of Mars only has 1 Megapixle. However, it’s the size of the individual pixels that makes the difference.

All photos on Travelphoto NET: Copyright Laurenz Bobke.
Copyright for the photos on the Outstanding Travel Photos blog: the individual photographer Republication only with my written permission, and only with proper credit (including a link back to this site if shown on the web).